Psychology & Health

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How have people who have stopped or reduced

their alcohol consumption incorporated this into
their social rituals?

Ashlea Bartram, Jaklin Eliott, Scott Hanson-Easey & Shona Crabb

To cite this article: Ashlea Bartram, Jaklin Eliott, Scott Hanson-Easey & Shona Crabb (2017): How
have people who have stopped or reduced their alcohol consumption incorporated this into their
social rituals?, Psychology & Health, DOI: 10.1080/08870446.2017.1300260

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2017.1300260

Published online: 14 Mar 2017.

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Psychology & Health, 2017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2017.1300260

How have people who have stopped or reduced their alcohol

consumption incorporated this into their social rituals?
Ashlea Bartram* , Jaklin Eliott , Scott Hanson-Easey and Shona Crabb

School of Public Health, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

(Received 4 October 2016; accepted 22 February 2017)

Objective: Limiting alcohol consumption is beneficial for health, but can be

challenging given the role alcohol plays in the rituals of many social
occasions. We examined how people who stopped or reduced their alcohol
consumption incorporated this change within their social rituals.
Design: We conducted 16 semi-structured one-on-one interviews with adults
aged 25–65 years, who lived in Australia and had stopped or significantly
reduced their alcohol consumption in the previous year.
Results: Through thematic analysis, we identified four approaches to adapting
drinking rituals: replacing alcohol with other drinks, replacing drinking with
other social activities, changing the meaning of drinking rituals and replacing
drinking occasions with activities that achieve different goals. These
approaches varied in the extent to which they reflected a low or high change
in the meanings and/or behaviours attached to the ritual. Approaches involv-
ing little change, such as using alternative drinks, were more readily accepted
by participants’ social companions than approaches involving more substantial
changes such as replacing drinking with activities achieving different goals.
Conclusions: Considering both the role and meaning alcohol carries in social
interactions, and how else these might be achieved, may assist people to stop
or reduce their drinking, without sacrificing their social lives.
Keywords: alcohol abstinence; alcohol drinking; rituals; social behaviour;
health promotion; qualitative research

Introduction
Limiting alcohol consumption is beneficial for health (Corrao, Bagnardi, Zambon, & La
Vecchia, 2004), but can be challenging for individuals (Bartram, Eliott, & Crabb, 2016;
de Visser, Robinson, & Bond, 2016), with alcohol playing a role in the rituals of many
social occasions (Beccaria & Sande, 2003; Cherrier & Gurrieri, 2013). Rituals help to
provide a sense of stability and identity to social groups, and failure to participate in
these rituals can lead to a weakening of ties to a social group (Pearson, Child, &
Carmon, 2010; Schuck & Bucy, 1997) – which can in itself have negative implications
for health (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, & Layton, 2010). However, rituals can also be flexible,
and may be adapted to support changes in behaviour (Schuck & Bucy, 1997). In this
study, we explored how people who have stopped or reduced their alcohol consumption
incorporated this change in drinking within their social rituals.

*Corresponding author. Email: ashlea.bartram@adelaide.edu.au

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

2 A. Bartram et al.

Alcohol makes a significant contribution to global morbidity and mortality, with

5.1% of the burden of disease and injury attributable to alcohol consumption (World
Health Organisation, 2014). In the short term, alcohol consumption increases a person’s
risk of injury (Taylor et al., 2010), while in the longer term it can lead to chronic health
conditions including liver disease and cancer (Corrao et al., 2004), as well as causing
harm to others (Laslett et al., 2011). Thus, there are compelling health and social rea-
sons for an individual to limit or abstain from alcohol. However, maintaining strong
social networks is also important for health: the health-related risks of having only a
small social network are comparable to the risks associated with alcohol consumption
(Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). Given the role that alcohol plays in the ritual of social inter-
actions in many Western countries, including Australia, the setting of this study, it is
important to consider how reducing or stopping alcohol consumption impacts on social
interactions, and how people are able to manage this impact.
In this paper, we focus on the role of alcohol within interpersonal rituals, and how
people are able to accommodate changes to alcohol consumption within these rituals. A
ritual is a repeated interaction where the behaviours that form part of the interaction take
on symbolic meaning (Schuck & Bucy, 1997). Interpersonal rituals are rituals enacted
between family, friends, and romantic partners, as distinct from broader cultural or insti-
tutional rituals (Pearson et al., 2010). Common types of rituals among friends include
participating in enjoyable activities, getting together, taking part in established events
and celebrations (Bruess & Pearson, 1997). Interpersonal rituals function to create bonds
within groups, foster a sense of belongingness, and reinforce a group’s norms and values
(Bruess & Pearson, 1997; Rossano, 2012; Schuck & Bucy, 1997). They play an impor-
tant role in creating a shared understanding of experiences, affirming participants’ mem-
bership within a group (Grusec & Davidov, 2010; Pearson et al., 2010). Thus, choosing
not to participate in a ritual is tantamount to choosing not to be part of a group.
The role that alcohol plays in the rituals of many social occasions, including
celebrations such as weddings and birthdays as well as everyday socialising, makes
stopping or reducing alcohol consumption potentially challenging. Cherrier and Gurrieri
(2013) explored the symbolic meaning alcohol holds in Australian social rituals with a
sample of people who had participated in FebFast™, a fundraising initiative in which
people abstain from alcohol during February. They noted that in abstaining from alcohol
for a limited time, these people became highly reflective on the meaning that alcohol
held in social rituals. Through their analysis, they identified three cultural norms (or
meanings) embedded in alcohol consumption in Australia: the norms of sharing,
reciprocity, and conformity. As highlighted by Cherrier and Gurrieri (2013) and other
researchers such as Emslie, Hunt, and Lyons (2013), sharing alcohol can be seen as
symbolic of sharing experiences and nurturing personal relationships, for example,
when celebrating positive occasions, as well as when showing solidarity after a negative
occasion such as a bereavement, and providing space to discuss emotions. For young
drinkers at least, even the downsides of shared alcohol consumption, such as needing to
care for someone who is heavily intoxicated, can be seen as providing an opportunity
for closer interpersonal bonding (de Visser, Wheeler, Abraham, & Smith, 2013).
Alcohol can symbolise reciprocity, with a social obligation to consume alcohol embed-
ded in certain social interactions: an offer of a drink can imply an obligation to accept
the drink, or else risk causing offence (Cherrier & Gurrieri, 2013; Paton-Simpson,
1995, 2001). Alcohol can also be used to symbolise conformity to a group: not drinking
 Psychology & Health 3

alcohol in the same manner as the rest of the group could be seen as a lack of
commitment to the group (Cherrier & Gurrieri, 2013; Nesvåg & Duckert, 2015). Collec-
tively, this suggests that choosing to stop or reduce alcohol consumption is not a
straightforward behaviour – one risks rejecting not just the drink, but the social group
with which one drinks.
Nonetheless, rituals can be adapted to meet the changing needs of a social group
over time (Schuck & Bucy, 1997). Rituals have the potential to function as a useful tool
to support behaviour change where that change can fit into an existing ritual, or can be
incorporated into a new ritual. This ritual then helps to normalise the new behaviour.
By contrast, where the behaviour cannot be accommodated within existing rituals, the
ritual can hinder its uptake (Fiese & Wamboldt, 2000; Schuck & Bucy, 1997). Examin-
ing the role of rituals can be helpful when trying to understand why someone may
struggle to adopt a desired behaviour (Segal, 2004). This approach has been used fruit-
fully in the field of managing chronic conditions, where researchers and practitioners
have recognised that behaviours that impact on health outcomes, such as adherence to
treatment regimes, are often enacted in a broader context of family routines and rituals,
and both influence and are influenced by this context (Crespo et al., 2013). For exam-
ple, Fiese and Wamboldt (2000) argued that good asthma treatment adherence can be
promoted by embedding adherence in the context of family routines and rituals. They
proposed four ways of using routines and rituals to achieve this adherence: integrating
treatment behaviours into existing routines and rituals, redefining the meaning of beha-
viours within existing rituals, creating new routines and rituals, and re-aligning routines
and rituals to resolve conflict between family members.
Such an approach may also be applicable to supporting people to reduce their alco-
hol consumption, given that the action of (not) drinking is similarly made within the
context of interpersonal rituals. Research has indicated that non-drinkers may need to
renegotiate the activities of their friendship groups so that these are supportive of
abstaining from alcohol, or face removing themselves from such groups (Conroy & de
Visser, 2014; Herring, Bayley, & Hurcombe, 2014). As with chronic disease manage-
ment, a focus on how individuals who stop or reduce their drinking are able (or not) to
incorporate this into their interpersonal rituals, may provide further insight into how
people can negotiate this change without jeopardising their social group membership.
In this paper, we report findings from a study exploring how Australian adults who
have stopped or reduced their alcohol consumption experienced social situations where
drinking alcohol was normative. We aimed to examine how these adults worked to
incorporate their change in drinking into their interpersonal rituals. An improved aware-
ness of how people are able to alter their interpersonal rituals to change the role of
alcohol within them, may facilitate a more nuanced and pragmatic approach to health
promotion around alcohol, better assisting people to reduce their alcohol consumption,
without asking them to sacrifice their social well-being.

Method
Participants
We recruited participants via a range of approaches, including flyers posted around the
researchers’ community, a Facebook™ event, a media release and personal contacts.
People expressing an interest in the study were provided with a plain-language
4 A. Bartram et al.

information sheet containing further information about the study, and those meeting
inclusion criteria were invited to a face-to-face interview at a time and place convenient
for them. Inclusion criteria for the study were that participants must be aged 25 years or
older, have stopped or significantly reduced their alcohol consumption for at least three
months in the past year, and live in South Australia. We applied this age limit as
previous research about non-drinkers has predominantly focused on young adults (e.g.
Conroy & de Visser, 2014; Herring et al., 2014), and we sought to extend this research
to a broader adult sample. We acknowledge that across this broad age range, the social
meanings of drinking may vary; however, as our interest was in exploring how people
negotiated changes in the meaning of alcohol within their interpersonal rituals, rather
than in the meanings per se, we argue this breadth was reasonable.
In total, we recruited 16 participants who had recently stopped or significantly
reduced their alcohol consumption. Twenty-two people who expressed an interest in the
study were excluded from participation, with the most common reason for exclusion
being that they made a change in their drinking more than a year ago (12 people).
Other reasons included living outside of South Australia (7), aged less than 25 years
(2), made a change of less than three months’ duration (1), not made a change (1) and
could not contact to arrange an interview (1; numbers exceed 22 as two people failed
to meet multiple inclusion criteria). Despite initially indicating that they met study crite-
ria, it emerged during the course of interviews that two participants had made a signifi-
cant change to their drinking outside of the time frame specified in our inclusion
criteria (in both cases, approximately four years prior to the interview). As these partici-
pants were still able to reflect in detail about their experiences (the reason we had
imposed a time limit), we included their data in analyses. Recruitment continued to the
point where we deemed that no new information was emerging from interviews, an
indication that data saturation had been reached (Morse, 1995). This point was deter-
mined based on preliminary coding of the interviews by the first author, in discussion
with co-authors.

Procedure
This study was approved by the authors’ university ethics committee. The first author
conducted, audio-recorded, and transcribed all interviews. At the beginning of each
interview, the interviewer reiterated study aims and obtained participants’ written con-
sent. Interviews were semi-structured, with open-ended questions and additional probing
questions covering topics such as participants’ drinking patterns, their decision to make
a change, their experience of becoming a non- or lighter drinker, and their approaches
to managing social situations. At the end of the interview, participants completed a
short demographic questionnaire. The interview schedule was structured to minimise
leading questions and provide opportunities for the participant to direct the flow of con-
versation. Following each interview, the interviewer listened to the interview recording
and reflected on her contribution to the interview. She then discussed with co-authors
any potential need to modify the interview schedule to further foreground participants’
experiences. This process lead to the inclusion of a broad opening question where
participants were invited to ‘Tell me about the change you made in your drinking’,
which allowed participants to orient towards what was personally meaningful about
 Psychology & Health 5

their experience, and thus have greater influence over the direction of the interview.
The first author transcribed each interview verbatim, altering any potentially identifying
information such as names and places.

Analysis
Transcripts were entered into the NVivo 10™ software package (QSR International
Pty Ltd, 2012) for analysis. We took a thematic approach to analysis, following the
guidelines suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006). The epistemological framework for
this analysis was essentialist/realist, aiming to understand and report the experiences,
meaning, and reality of participants with regard to changing their drinking in social
situations (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The first author read and re-read transcripts to
familiarise herself with the data, and then systematically coded the data-set related to
how participants socialised with friends following their change in drinking. This
coding was conducted inductively, with codes driven by the data rather than a pre-
existing coding scheme. The first author next collated the coded data into potential
themes. These themes were reviewed by all authors to ensure they reflected both the
coded extracts and the entire data-set, and refined through discussion to ensure that
all agreed on the interpretation. We also reviewed the literature on rituals and beha-
viour change, and drew on this literature, particularly the four ways for intervening in
rituals and routines outlined by Fiese and Wamboldt (2000), to help refine and name
our themes. We considered similarities and differences between each theme, and used
this to generate a ‘map’ of our analysis, showing how the themes are related; this is
included with our results as Figure 1.
To allow the reader to assess our interpretation, we have provided excerpts to
illustrate each theme. Excerpts were selected as the most concise and/or archetypical
example (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015). To aid readability, we have added punctuation
and removed speech elements such as false starts and repetitions (Bailey, 2008). After
each excerpt, we have indicated the participant’s gender (M = male, F = female), age
range and change in drinking, to provide additional context. As is common in the
reporting of qualitative studies, we have presented our results and discussion
concurrently (Liamputtong, 2013).

Results and discussion

Participant characteristics
Participants were 16 adults (10 female, 6 male) aged from 25 to 65 years
(M = 39.8 years, median = 36 years). Details of participants’ ethnicity, relationship sta-
tus, parental status and employment status are shown in Table 1. Participants’ reasons
for stopping or reducing their drinking were individual and complex; however, some
common themes included to support the pursuit of other activities (7 participants), to
bring their drinking under control (6), because they disliked drinking/drunkenness (5),
to manage a health condition (5), to feel healthier generally (4), and for a personal
challenge (2). Some participants gave multiple reasons within these categories. We used
a matrix coding query in NVivo to check for the prevalence of themes across demo-
graphic characteristics; no systematic differences were apparent.
6 A. Bartram et al.

Figure 1. A tentative model of approaches to incorporating change in drinking into interpersonal

rituals.

Table 1. Participant demographic characteristics.

N %
Ethnicity
Australian or European/Australian 13 81
Indian/Australian 1 6
Colombian/Australian 1 6
Ethiopian 1 6
Relationship status
In a relationship 8 50
Single 8 50
Parental status
Children under 18 years 4 25
No children under 18 years 12 75
Employment status
Employed and/or studying 13 81
Not employed – retired 1 6
Not employed – unable to work 2 13
 Psychology & Health 7

Thematic structure
We identified four overarching ways in which participants reported replacing alcohol
and/or the rituals in which drinking alcohol was involved: using non-alcoholic drinks in
place of alcohol, replacing drinking occasions with other social activities, changing the
meaning of drinking rituals, and replacing drinking with activities that achieve different
goals. As the model depicted in Figure 1 illustrates, these approaches varied in the
extent to which they reflected a low or high change in the behaviour involved in these
interpersonal rituals, and a low or high change in the meaning associated with these
rituals.

Using non-alcoholic drinks in place of alcohol (low change in meaning/low change

in behaviour)
Most participants continued to participate in interpersonal rituals involving alcohol on
at least some occasions, by substituting a non-alcoholic drink for the alcoholic one
being consumed by others. This small change had little impact on both the behaviours
and meanings involved in the ritual, allowing it to proceed virtually unchanged. As
Cassie described in the following excerpt, substituting a non-alcoholic drink that closely
resembled the drink it was replacing effectively allowed her to continue to participate in
Christmas rituals:

I got onto Maggie Beer, it’s a fake pink champagne, it’s like a sparkling grape juice or
something like that, it’s actually really tasty. And so for Christmas I took a bottle of that to
events that I went to, so I felt like I was having something special, and the bubbles go up
your nose and it feels really nice. So that was easy, so you can still toast, and it still looks
like you’re having pink champagne or something, but you’re just having sparkling juice.
(F, 30–34 years, stopped then recommenced at reduced level)

Because her chosen drink had a close physical resemblance and a similar sensation on
consumption to champagne, as well as a prestigious brand (‘Maggie Beer’), Cassie was
able to feel that she was having a ‘special’ drink just like her friends, and thus continu-
ing to share the same experience with them. Consuming non-alcoholic drinks that
resemble alcoholic ones can help non-drinkers to avoid scrutiny of their drinking
choices, effectively passing as drinkers (Bartram et al., 2016; Conroy & de Visser,
2014). However, even drinks which were clearly non-alcoholic could be effective sub-
stitutes, allowing participants to continue to share an experience with other drinkers.
Dan, for example, saw drinking something as non-negotiable when spending time with
his girlfriend, even if the drink was visibly different to his girlfriend’s alcoholic drink:

If [my girlfriend] was having a wine I’d have a soft drink, for sure. You’ve got to drink,
got to do something. (M, 45–49 years, stopped)

This approach – substituting drinks – still fit within the behaviours expected of

participants in their social rituals, so was readily accepted by others on many, but not
all, occasions. Acceptance of non-alcoholic drinks depended on whether the alcoholic
content of a beverage was seen by other ritual participants as a key part of the social
ritual, or whether another aspect, such as the physical presence of a drink, was more
8 A. Bartram et al.

central. For example, Laura was still able to take part in toasts with a non-alcoholic
drink as long as she was still able to enact what was seen in her group as the key
moment in the ritual, the ‘chink’:

Laura: I’ll just toast with my water or whatever I’ve got.

Interviewer: So that works alright for you?
Laura: Yeah. It’s all about the chink. … Like Melbourne Cup, I had pineapple juice
that day. So I have on occasions found some alternatives but yeah, just the
chink. (F, 35–39 years, stopped)

The Melbourne Cup is an Australian horse race typically associated with social events
involving the consumption of alcohol (Lloyd, Matthews, Livingston, & Jayasekara,
2011). In Laura’s group, the actual content of the drink was not viewed as essential to
the ritual, so Laura’s choice of a non-alcoholic drink did not impact on whether she
was seen as participating in the shared experience. However, this was not the case for
all participants. Among Kyle’s group of friends, it was traditional to buy drinks for each
other as a sign of appreciation and friendship. As Kyle, who had reduced rather than
stopped his drinking, described in this except, his attempts to substitute soft drinks were
not very successful:

I’ve tried strategies like having one alcoholic drink with one [friend] and then having a soft
drink with another. That doesn’t work because the person who is buying me the soft drink
says ‘Dave bought you that drink. Why don’t you want a beer with me?’ (M, 55–59 years,
reduced)

In contrast to Laura’s friends, Kyle’s friends viewed the content of the drink as more
central to the experience of the ritual. Soft drinks carried a lesser status than alcohol,
potentially signalling a lesser sign of appreciation or friendship. This might reflect the
typically cheaper price of soft drinks – other researchers have found that when people
shout, or purchase, drinks for each other, making an equivalent financial contribution
conveys important meanings of equality and solidarity (Murphy, Hart, & Moore, 2016).
Many participants noted that as the length of an occasion, and the amount of alco-
hol consumed, increased, non-alcoholic drinks became a less effective substitute. In
these cases, a shared state of intoxication was often a central part of the ritual. Where
participants were noticeably less intoxicated than their friends, they no longer felt as if
they were sharing the same experience. Maya described this as being unable to speak
the language of her intoxicated friends:

If other people are drunk with other drunk people they sort of have this language and
understanding and tolerance of each other, and I just sort of have a lower tolerance of
really really annoying drunk people … I miss being drunk because then I can talk sh*t and
la la la, like say whatever comes into my head. (F, 25–29 years, reduced)

For participants, substituting a non-alcoholic for an alcoholic drink was successful

where the alcoholic content of the drink was not a key part of the ritual, and less
successful where the alcohol content of the drink was a critical element of the shared
experience. Thus, participants also identified other ways to incorporate a change of
drinking into their interpersonal rituals.
 Psychology & Health 9

Replacing drinking occasions with other social activities (low change in meaning/
high change in behaviour)
Many participants described identifying alternative social activities to replace some of
the social occasions in which they would previously have drunk. These replacement
activities did not involve alcohol, but otherwise fulfilled the same meaning as their pre-
vious drinking rituals. Meanings varied across social groups, but common themes
included having fun or getting together. For example, Cassie viewed drinking with her
close friends as a ritual of getting together, providing opportunities for them to meet
and converse. Therefore, she aimed to replace these drinking rituals with activities that
allowed them to achieve this same goal:

When I was going out with close friends, you go out and you would have a drink, go
‘Let’s meet at a bar, let’s go have dinner and have a couple glasses of wine’ and then
you’d have more drinks afterwards, or just ‘ Come over in the evening and let’s chat over
a glass of wine’… So it was a lot trying to change the way that I interacted with my
friends. So I wanted go for a walk with my friends and go chatting, because I like doing
that. Or go for breakfast, I love breakfast. So I really tried to alter the way that we were
interacting. (F, 30–34 years, stopped then recommenced at reduced level)

These replacement activities – walking, having breakfast – involved quite different

behaviours to Cassie’s previous drinking rituals, but nevertheless carried the same
meaning as these rituals. This similar meaning may help to explain why Cassie’s
friends were willing to adopt these new activities: the activities had a good ‘fit’ with
the group. The concept of cultural fitness describes the tendency for behaviours or
technologies to be adopted where they increase the fit of individuals with a particular
cultural environment (Gobbin, 1998). This concept implies that something is more
likely to be incorporated into a culture’s rituals if it resembles or fulfils the same
symbolic function or meaning to what it is replacing (Solér & Plazas, 2012). Drawing
on this concept, Solér and Plazas (2012) argued that tacos have been incorporated
into Swedish family meal rituals as they fulfil a similar function to the more tradi-
tional Swedish smorgasbord in that they bring people together to interact while still
allowing individuals to customise their own food. Likewise, where people can pro-
pose a replacement for drinking that fulfils a similar meaning or function, this may
be more easily adopted into a groups’ rituals than where people simply choose to
abstain.
Finding activities that provided these same meanings could involve effort. As
Paloma described below, for her and her friends, drinking had taken on the symbolic
meaning of having fun, to the point that ‘drinking’ was virtually synonymous with
‘fun,’ and thus the first, and usually only, possibility considered when planning social
activities. Once Paloma was no longer able to drink, because she was secretly undergo-
ing IVF treatment, she found it easier to identify alternative activities:

When you think about ‘Oh I’m going to have fun,’ the first thing is ‘go out for drinks,’ or
‘have a nice dinner with some drinks,’ or ‘let’s go to have some drinks.’ But because that
part is not there now, it’s like I’m going to have fun, there’s another range of possibilities
that we can have fun, and not think directly ‘let’s go for a drink.’ So I think discovering
that has been interesting, just saying, ‘Well, instead of having a drink we can just go for a
walk,’ or go for brunch or try to do things ourselves like prepare things at home. Too
10 A. Bartram et al.

many different things that probably before, or people that all the time thinking of going
out for drinks, don’t see. (F, 30–34 years, stopped)

Paloma presented this as enlightening, allowing her to ‘see’ alternative ways to ‘have
fun’ that others could not, increasing the flexibility in her interpersonal rituals. In
positioning herself as more aware of the ‘different things’ she and her friends could do
for pleasure, she also protected herself from negative constructions of non-drinkers as
boring or unsociable (Conroy & de Visser, 2013).
In contrast, finding activities that achieved the same meaning as drinking with
friends was presented as too challenging for some participants. Geri, who had reduced
but not stopped her drinking, reported that this was one factor that had discouraged her
from making further changes:

My social interactions or things we do for fun often involve going out to bars or going to
someone’s house and drinking wine with dinner. I think that probably is something that I
would have to change to make more of a change [to my drinking]. I don’t know what
those things would be though. Board games? I’m not sure. (F, 40–44 years, reduced)

While Geri was able to propose an alternative activity, board games, she was hesitant to
accept it as a satisfactory option. One of the ways in which people use alcohol is to sig-
nify their ‘adulthood’ – particularly for parents who have young children, as Geri does
(Emslie, Hunt, & Lyons, 2015). Board games, in contrast, are typically associated with
children, and thus might not have fulfilled the same meaning for Geri as drinking alco-
hol with her friends.
In addition, participants did not always view themselves as having sufficient status
within a particular social group, to influence the form of its interactions. Dan, for example,
had not tried suggesting new activities with his football mates, as he ‘was never a key
player in that group.’ Within groups, only people in higher status, or ‘key’ roles tend to be
able to influence or initiate activities (Berger, Cohen, & Zelditch, 1972). Nadia’s experi-
ence also illustrated this: Nadia found it difficult to find a way to accommodate her non-
drinking within the social rituals of new friends she met while travelling, but was able to
encourage her long-term friends to vary the form of their social interactions:

When I was travelling it was a bit harder because everyone drinks, and so they’re like
‘Come on, have a drink with us, this will be fun, blah blah blah.’ So it does make you feel
a bit secluded. They were new friends. With older friends, people that I’ve known for a
while who know my history and what not, they’re a bit more accepting of me not drinking.
And they’re happy to find other things to do. (F, 25–29 years, stopped)

With newer friends, Nadia may not have attained full member status in the group, and
thus had less ability to influence the form of their interaction rituals than with a group
of friends in which her membership was fully established. This suggests that replacing
drinking rituals with other social activities is a strategy more easily pursued among
groups where an individual was positioned as a central member and an initiator of
activities. Where this is not the case, taking other approaches to incorporating
non-drinking into social rituals, such as those described in the previous and following
sections, may be easier.
 Psychology & Health 11

Changing the meaning of drinking rituals (high(er) change in meaning/low change

in behaviour)
Some participants reported that they continued to participate in drinking rituals, but had
tried to change the meaning associated with these to better accommodate their reduced
level of consumption. Edward, who had significantly reduced his drinking, worked to
maintain this change by placing greater emphasis on the meaning he attached to his
consumption of alcohol. Prior to reducing his drinking, Edward had viewed drinks as
‘thirst quenching things that you’ll throw off’; now, he wanted his consumption to be
more mindful. In this quote, he described his thought process:

This is my night I’m allowed to have a drink! So I still cherish the nights. I look forward
to them. I look forward to the flavour of whatever I’m going to drink, I plan it, I think
about it... I’ve got to the stage where the actual contemplation of it is mindful, but I
haven’t yet got to the point where the consumption of it, I’m really getting to that sort of
existential mindfulness of each sip and, I’m still too much in a hurry. (M, 60–64 years,
reduced)

Edward introduced additional ritualised elements into his drinking: specified days of
consumption, a thought process to work through prior to each drink. Building routines
and rituals around a behaviour can remove the need for continual decision-making
about engaging in that behaviour (Klafke, Eliott, Olver, & Wittert, 2014), and thus may
have helped Edward to maintain his change in drinking. Edward’s new approach to
consumption, with its focus on appreciation of the drink itself, may also have helped to
position him positively as a ‘connoisseur,’ an identity of a drinker who values the qual-
ity, rather than quantity, of alcohol consumed (Muhlack, Eliott, Carter, Braunack-Mayer,
& Morfidis, 2016). Similarly, young moderate and non-drinkers have reported that a
focus on taste over intoxication can help them to ‘feel good’, thus experiencing
moderation not as a restriction but as a mechanism for enhancing their enjoyment of an
occasion (Graber et al., 2016).
Like Edward, Cassie, who had stopped drinking alcohol completely for a year, then
returned to drinking at a reduced level, was still willing to take part in some social
rituals involving drinking. However, she had tried to shift how alcohol functioned in
these rituals, from a central element to more of a condiment, as Cassie described it –
something to enhance the experience rather than to define it:

I do catch up with friends nowadays and we might have a glass of wine and not eat, but I
usually try and encourage that we do something with food. [Partly] because it absorbs the
alcohol and means you don’t get too silly, but it’s just, it’s nice, I quite like that. I’ve prob-
ably made it into a bit of a ritual of food and wine together… Drinking because it empha-
sises the flavour of the food you’re eating. I think wine is an accompaniment, it’s like salt.
(F, 30–34 years, stopped then recommenced at reduced level)

Both Edward and Cassie acknowledged that these reinterpretations of meaning are
changes they have tried to make to their drinking rituals, rather than changes that have
been completely embedded. In Edward’s case, much of the change in meaning was
about his anticipation of a drinking occasion, so was something he could do alone.
Where the meaning attached to drinking occasions was strongly shared with others in a
12 A. Bartram et al.

social group, a proposed change in interpretation also needed to be accepted by these

group members. This was not always the case, as Cassie described:

I used to have a ritual where on the first day of summer each year my friend and I would
go down to [beachside bar] and have a boozy afternoon, and I’m like ‘We can still go.’
And it’s like, ‘What’s the point?’ And like, ‘There’s still food, there’s still the beach,
there’s still catching up’, and so this is the friendship that has no longer really continued.
(F, 30–34 years, stopped then recommenced at reduced level)

Cassie partially attributed the discontinuance of this friendship to her change in

drinking: ‘the fact that, when we were hanging out and I wasn’t drinking, it wasn’t any
fun for them.’ Participating in shared rituals plays an important role in signalling com-
mitment to a (friendship) group and its values (Rossano, 2012). Thus, the loss of these
shared rituals, without new rituals to replace them, can signal the destabilisation or even
dissolution of a group, as Cassie reported occurring in this case.

Replacing drinking with activities that achieve different goals (high change in
meaning/high change in behaviour)
Some participants also described replacing drinking with activities that achieved quite
different goals, reflecting a high degree of change in both meaning and behaviour.
Unlike the replacements discussed in the previous sections, participants mostly pursued
these new activities alone, rather than building them into new interpersonal rituals to
replace the drinking rituals they had lost. These replacement activities were often those
that participants reported valuing more highly than their drinking rituals: things like
study, exercise, travel, or working on other ambitions. Edward, for example, replaced
drinking every evening with working on a writing project:

I had some dreams that I wanted to achieve, and I’ve never felt I would be able to, because
if you drink a glass of wine at night, you get really tired. So I feel like I’ve got my eve-
nings back. I’ve got some dreams about writing, [and] I’ve been ghost-writing a book for
somebody. I work at night on her project. (M, 60–64 years, reduced)

Edward’s new evening ritual involved both a different behaviour – writing instead of
drinking – and a different meaning – actively working on a project instead of winding
down at the end of the day. Accordingly, it bears little resemblance to his previous
ritual, but was nonetheless something Edward wanted to pursue, as it helped him work
towards a valued goal. Similarly, Nadia spoke about replacing her drinking with activi-
ties that achieve new goals:

I’ve got my studies now full-time and I’ve got my work and I’m going to travel, so I’ve
got all these goals and if I was drinking every night it’s not going to match up, I’m not
going to be able to do what I want to do. (F, 25–29 years, stopped)

Nadia no longer valued drinking with her friends as highly as she did her studies and
travel, so was willing to reduce her participation in these social rituals. As discussed
earlier, this lack of participation in rituals could lead to a weakening of ties between
participants and their social groups. Participants were conscious of this possibility, but
 Psychology & Health 13

did not always present it as a problem, seeing it instead as a necessary consequence of

pursuing a more highly valued goal. For example, James acknowledged that his
‘friendship’s probably dropped a little bit just from lack of seeing them’ since he signif-
icantly cut back on drinking after entering university as a mature-age student. However,
when asked if this was a problem for him, he stated ‘No, because … I had uni to
change my life.’
These valued goals may have more closely represented the identities that partici-
pants desired to express following their change in drinking, than the identities they
drew from their social group memberships. Previous research has highlighted that how
people drink alcohol (Muhlack et al., 2016), or choose not to drink (Fry, 2011; Nairn,
Higgins, Thompson, Anderson, & Fu, 2006; Pennay, MacLean, & Rankin, 2016), plays
a role in expressing desired identities. For example, Pennay et al. (2016) analysed blog
posts from participants of Hello Sunday Morning™, an online programme that encour-
ages people to commit to give up alcohol for a limited period of time and blog about
their experiences. They identified that, for some people, stopping or reducing drinking
can play a part in constructing a new, healthy, sense of self, which is reinforced by par-
ticipating in activities not focused on drinking (Pennay et al., 2016). Where a group
identity is no longer consistent with a desired construction of self, people may prefer to
rescind their group membership in order to pursue activities more consistent with the
identity they seek to express. Such a choice may also be beneficial for health. Gener-
ally, continuity of social identity through life transitions is seen to result in health and
well-being benefits (e.g. Haslam et al., 2008). However, a study of residents of a drug
and alcohol treatment centre found that for these individuals, identity transition, rather
than identity maintenance, was predictive of health and well-being an average of seven
months after treatment, suggesting that there are cases where the benefits of a change in
social identity may outweigh the benefits of maintaining it (Dingle, Stark, Cruwys, &
Best, 2015).
Farouk acknowledged, however, that giving up on engaging in social rituals with
friends was difficult to do, even if it was in pursuit of a valued goal (in his case, also
study). For Farouk, stopping drinking was only possible because he had relocated geo-
graphically for his studies, away from his close friends:

For me it’s worked out because I live in a different place [now], and I made new friends,
and I’m doing different things. But if I was still with my friends and still living the same
lifestyle, I wouldn’t have any reason to [stop drinking]. I wouldn’t do it. [Moving] was an
opportunity to try this. (M, 25–29 years, stopped)

In moving to a new town, Farouk had already loosened his ties to his established social
groups and their rituals. It was thus easier for him to establish new routines and rituals
not focused on drinking. While interpersonal rituals can be valuable in reinforcing ties
to a social group, they can hinder the pursuit of goals that require behaviours inconsis-
tent with these rituals.

Conclusion
As illustrated in Figure 1, we identified four approaches taken by participants to incor-
porating their change in drinking into their social rituals, varying in the extent to which
14 A. Bartram et al.

these approaches reflected a relatively low or high change in the behaviours and/or
meanings involved in the ritual. Incorporating changes in alcohol consumption into
social rituals was possible for participants, particularly where these changes had limited
impact on the meaning and/or behaviours attached to these rituals, tending towards the
lower left quadrant of the model. Approaches which involved lower degrees of change
to the ritual, such as using non-alcoholic drinks in place of alcohol, were often more
readily accepted by participants’ social companions than approaches which involved
high degrees of change, such as replacing drinking with activities unrelated in either
behaviour or meaning to the original ritual (the top-right quadrant). Most participants
drew on a mix of approaches to adapting their rituals across different situations and
social groups, and also reported being unable to adapt some of their interpersonal rituals
to accommodate their change in drinking.
To date there has been limited research into the factors that explain why some
groups are more easily able to transform existing rituals to accommodate behaviour
change than others (Crespo et al., 2013). Factors that have been proposed to play a role
in whether a group is able to adapt its rituals include the dynamic of the group (Crespo,
Kielpikowski, Pryor, & Jose, 2011), or characteristics of the ritual, such as whether the
element someone desires to change is key to the ritual’s structure and meaning, or,
alternatively, a less central aspect that is amenable to change (Crespo et al., 2013). This
study provides support for the relevance of both of these factors. In terms of group
dynamic, several participants reported that they were unable to influence the activities
of groups where their role in the group carried limited status, either because they did
not identify as a leader or because they were new members of the group. In terms of
the characteristics of the ritual, participants found it easier to substitute a non-alcoholic
drink in rituals where the physical presence of a drink was more important than its alco-
holic content, such as in a toast, than in rituals where the alcoholic content was consid-
ered central, such as rituals focused on intoxication.
Although we have provided new insight into how people who change their drinking
are able to incorporate this into their social rituals, we acknowledge some limitations.
In this study, we heard from a small number of self-selected people who changed their
drinking, but not from other members of these people’s social groups. Our participants
may have been motivated to present themselves as socially competent and able to influ-
ence their friends – although we note that participants did raise examples of situations
in which their influence was limited. Further insight might be gained from an explo-
ration of how the friends of people who stop or reduce their drinking experience and
understand this change, and its impact on their social rituals. We also acknowledge that
study participants were predominantly, although not exclusively, of European–Australian
ethnicity, and their experiences are unlikely to be generalisable to people from different
cultural backgrounds, for whom drinking may serve different functions.
Given the role alcohol plays in the rituals of many social occasions in Australia (as
indeed elsewhere), it is important to ensure that in encouraging people to reduce their
alcohol consumption, we are not asking them to sacrifice their social well-being, as this
too has implications for health. The four approaches to accommodating changes in
drinking within social rituals we identified in this study might provide useful guidance
as to how people looking to stop or reduce their drinking can avoid this sacrifice. In
particular, our model of these approaches (Figure 1) highlights the importance of
considering both the role and meaning drinking plays in people’s social interactions,
 Psychology & Health 15

and how else these might be achieved. Alternatively, where people identify that they no
longer value those meanings, rescinding their membership of a social group to pursue
other goals may be worthwhile. By incorporating changes in drinking into their social
rituals, people may more easily be able to maintain their social relationships, where
they desire to do so, which should lead to better health outcomes overall.

Acknowledgements
We thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments on an earlier version of
this manuscript.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship;
a Northern Communities Health Foundation Short-Term Supplementary Scholarship; an Ian
Wilson Liberal Research Supplementary Scholarship. The funding bodies had no involvement in
the design and conduct of the study or the writing of the article.

ORCID
Ashlea Bartram http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4657-6948
Jaklin Eliott http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3154-4516

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